Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Right now I am still bleary-eyed from staying up to absorb every last drop. Every moment of the advancing electoral map throughout the evening. Every sweeping shot of the cheering crowd in Grant Park. When President-Elect Obama (Lord, how I love the sound of that) stood at the podium and summoned history in service of the future, suddenly, somehow, he was not alone on that stage anymore.

We didn’t want to go to bed. And even after we finally did go, Mrs. Sotto Voce and I kept breaking out into spontaneous giggles for a long, long time.

There’s going to be a lot of talk about last night’s two speeches. While President-Elect Obama’s was one for the history books, I found Senator McCain’s farewell address to the troops to be every inch the gracious and classy exit that I had hoped the old lion would make.

But as Sen. McCain left the stage and disappeared behind history’s curtain, the music that accompanied him off sent a message — and a quite surprising one — all its own.

Music, you ask? What music?

I love submarine movies. In fact, next to science fiction I’d have to say that the submarine movie is my favorite genre. I am also a devoted film score buff. So for me there was no mistaking the background recording that played as Sen. McCain left the stage.

It was, unmistakably, from Hans Zimmer’s magnificent score for Crimson Tide.

Now, Zimmer’s peerless film music is widely used as background music in many commercials — political ads, especially. He excels at creating stirring, monumental themes. And his score for Crimson Tide is arguably one of his best.

Big whoop, you’re probably thinking. So his stage managers cued up some good film music. So what? But those of you who know the film, your eyes have probably already begun to widen.

Crimson Tide is the story of two men — Ramsey, a crusty old salty sailor who commands the nuclear missile submarine USS Alabama, and Hunter, his brainy new executive officer. Ramsey is played by Gene Hackman, and Hunter is played by Denzel Washington.

Beginning to get it? That’s just for starters. In the film, the two men wrestle with a crisis — whether or not they should follow an incomplete and unverified order to launch a first-strike against Russia in order to forestall a rogue leader’s apparent intention to launch his own warheads against the United States. Ramsey intends an immediate launch with the order in hand. Hunter wants to verify the order first.

What began as a simple case of mismatched personalities (Ramsey is a hot-tempered old-school hard-ass with no qualms about his convictions, Hunter is a level-headed new-school team-builder who questions the morality of war) quickly escalates into mutiny, a divided crew, and white-knuckle plot tension.

Now, here be spoilers — and very revealing ones at that. In the nick of time, Hunter is proved right, and Ramsey realizes that by being an obstinate, trigger-happy martinet, he had nearly caused World War III. In Ramsey’s sudden realization that Hunter’s cool, rational, methodical approach had really been the correct one all along, we see his understanding that his time — the era of old sailors who only needed “my command, a checklist, a target, and a button to push; all I had to know was how to push it, and they’d tell me when” — is over.

The selection from the film score that accompanied Sen. McCain off the stage was from the final scene of the movie — where, after voluntarily resigning his commission and recommending Hunter for command, Ramsey admits to Hunter, “You were right, I was wrong,” salutes him, and with an inscrutable expression (regret? Hatred? Resignation?), turns and walks off the base with his faithful little dog — his only remaining loyal friend.

I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who noticed, either. How much are we supposed to read into it, I wonder? Is irony (or the ability to perceive it, in any case) truly dead? Or was it a concession of more than just a political race?

P.S. — I hate to admit it, but I didn’t recognize that President-Elect Obama’s exit music was also from a Denzel Washington film, Remember the Titans. I’m not much for sports films. Maybe I should try this one, though. Thanks to Shawn Adler of the MTV Movie blog for pointing that out on his blog, and for the link to the music selection above.

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